From Daily Candy, to which I’m always on the verge of unsubscribing solely because of those uninviting drawings of knock-kneed, vapid-faced quasi-women they insist on featuring as a brand identity, but which nevertheless has about one good tip out of ten (or maybe eight). For instance:

Last Resort: Everyone’s already skipped town and left you in charge of apt/pet/plant/mistress sitting? Well, at least you can still let your mind wander. Crack open a copy of The Subway Chronicles, a new series of mass transit-inspired essays from straphangers like Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, and Calvin Trillin (coming out on Tuesday on amazon.com). [Francine Prose and Stan Fischler are the book’s two other contributors.]

Boldface mine; blankface theirs. I should add that I also subscribe to Daily Candy London and although the bad drawings are also featured there, the writing is significantly better. The British—they know the language. It’s sad but it’s true. Speaking of which, my friends Georgina Sowerby and Brian Luff in Crouch End have a hilarious special episode on their Comedy 365 network, called “Big Squeeze: The Seven Wives of Henry VIII.” As they describe it:

A special one-off episode of the Big Squeeze, in which Sowerby & Luff have a crack at costume drama. Can Georgina become the 7th wife of Henry VIII? How will Cardinal Luff cope with this latest twist in the King’s marital status? Most importantly, will Brian & Georgina be able to persuade Ray Winstone to play the part of Henry VIII?

Listen to it here, and then hear Henry VIII reveal his most intimate secrets (“Did you know that oil paintings add about ten pounds?”) in an exclusive interview with Chris Skinner, truly the Barbara Walters of our time. Then subscribe to both of their podcasts on Comedy 365, and you’ll be happy every time you listen.

Related:
Recently in Jonathans Are Illuminated; partial Jonathans archive
All about Brian Luff’s audio novel, Sex on Legs
Gloopy Love and The Office, Neverending, and more about these geniuses of British podcast comedy, including Ricky Gervais, Sowerby and Luff, and Chris Skinner

Happy birthday, Mr. Masked Duck. (Thanks to TDV for happening to be reading How to Be Alone today and being able to do math in her head.)

Related: Donald Antrim interviews Franzen for Bomb.

Jonathan Franzen, as well as Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal (!), and Michael Chabon, will be guest-starring on The Simpsons next season.

A reading that sounds fun and kinda New Yorkery too:

Jonathan Baumbach and Cintra Wilson

TONIGHT, Thursday, March 23, 2006
Dirty Laundry Reading Series
9:30-11:00pm
Avenue C Laundromat
69 Avenue C at 5th Street
New York, NY

Jonathan Baumbach is the author of many books, including Reruns, Babble, Chez Charlotte and Emily, Seven Wives, and The Life and Times of Major Fiction. A former chairman of the National Society of Film Critics, he is the father of filmmaker Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale).

“Mr. Baumbach has more voices than Willie the Whale, more accents than the people at Berlitz, a gift for parody, a detector for cliché.”
—The New York Times

“Baumbach has a real gift for alchemizing fictional ‘autobiography’ into the pure gold of comic terror. He draws his inspiration from the same shell-shocked urban experiences that nourished the paranoid monologues of Lenny Bruce.”
—Newsweek

Cintra Wilson is, of course, the fiction/screenwriter, glamorous stage presence, and Salonista. Here’s a Bookslut interview.

As Gothamist has ably reported, nearly all the Jonathans are reading in New York this week, starting with Jonathan Lethem hosting Selected Shorts tomorrow night at Symphony Space. This is one I really hate to miss. They tape these, don’t they?

Nevertheless, it’s bound to be a scintillating evening, and really, how much better-looking a literary event are you going to find? Here are the details:

February 28, 7 p.m.:

DEBORAH TREISMAN with JONATHAN LETHEM and A.M. HOMES

The New Yorker fiction contributors Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn) and A. M. Homes (Music for Torching) read from their work and talk with The New Yorker‘s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman.

On January 24, the tickets will become available to the public at the box office and by phone, 212-854-7799 (Monday-Friday 12-6 p.m.). 2 tickets per reservation. Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, Broadway at 116th St. Directions.

From the proofreader-seeking Columbia Arts Initiative blog.

…I can’t believe I wrote the whole thing.

Meanwhile, cartooning imp Patricia Storms, who rocked the Jonathans with her funny Lethem and Chabon fantasia, finds Oprah Frey-tened and frazzled as she tries to spin A Million Literary Pickles.

OK, yesterday’s. But anyone who knows me can tell you that time is a somewhat flexible thing for me. It’s still news, damnit, unless you’ve already picked up The Gotham Gazette. Today/yesterday, they interview/ed Jonathan Lethem, my favorite of the Jonathans, although others are close behind. Not all, but others. It’s not a competition, though! No, nothing that has to do with New York writers is about competition! We are above it. We are a mutually supportive collective of artists and breathe in as one, yogically, through one nostril at a time, and breathe out in harmony, often with cigarette-coffee-garlic hummus breath. Yuck.

What an imp! Irresistible:

“The Jonathan Ames Show” launches this Tuesday, September 27th at Mo Pitkin’s, 34 Avenue A (between 3rd and 2nd). Doors open at 8, show starts at 8:30. Cover charge is $12. Tickets are available at the door or on TicketWeb.

“The Jonathan Ames Show” will be at Mo’s the last Tuesday of every month this fall—October 25th and November 29th. No show in December, and then resuming in 2006.

Every month Ames will have a magician, a writer, a comedian, and a musician. Ames will begin the show with a dance with his sidekick (see below), followed by a brief monologue. Then there will be a variety-show.

The performer-guests for the first show are:

John Hodgman—author of the forthcoming The Areas of My Expertise.

Zero Boy—comedian, human-sound-effect machine, East Village legend.

Jessie Delfino—erotic folk-singer.

Magic Brian—magician.

After the performer does a ten-minute bit, Ames will interview his guest on their sexuality, their spirituality, their financial state, and whether they are hopeful or despairing about the human condition.

Ames will also have audience members sign up before the show—if they so choose—and one of those people will be randomly selected and interviewed as well.

Ames will have a sidekick—Patrick Bucklew. Bucklew will be naked, wearing only his prosthetic leg and a cod-piece that will cover his genitals. The codpiece will sprout some kind of Doctor Seuss-like vegetation. Bucklew’s head will be in a specially designed bowl, equipped with a snorkel to allow for breathing. During the performances, Bucklew, an artist, will do drawings or paintings, which will be for sale to the audience after the show. Also, after the show, he will remove his bowl and it will be passed around for donations, since he’s a starving artist, of the type that once proliferated in the East Village.

Categories: Jonathans

I couldn’t be happier that Jonathan Lethem got a MacArthur. He’s one of the most independent-thinking and hardworking, and least fad-tempted, writers we got, and as a nice bonus, he’s not a snappish prima donna. There’s no question he’ll make the most of the money, the moment, the extra visibility, and the mountains o’ love, which he seems to turn right back into good fiction rather than a lump of ego no one can swallow.

It’s not Darwinian elimination round here, but of course I love this Gawker hed: Lethem Wins MacArthur; Franzen, Foer Feel Out-Jonathaned.

Categories: Jonathans, Books